


Dificilis Arbitrium

by smangtheterrible



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Gen, His Last Vow, His Last Vow Spoilers, Holmes Brothers, M/M, Missing Scene, his last vow missing scene, john bedside with sherlock because i need that scene, johnlock if you squint, mycroft and sherlock bitching at each other, this is what happens when you read too many meta analyses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-18
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2018-01-09 04:04:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1141203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smangtheterrible/pseuds/smangtheterrible
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Missing scene from His Last vow, in which Mycroft Holmes has a much needed bedside chat with Sherlock over matters of the heart and the way the chips may fall here on out, compelling Sherlock to make a prison break out the hospital window.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dificilis Arbitrium

Mycroft watched them through the window. John was leaning forwards in his chair, elbows resting on Sherlock's bed, at ease. Unaware. He couldn't make out their words, just the buzz of John's voice, and the deep sound of Sherlock's laughter, which subsequently turned to a gasp of pain. Mycroft opened the door and stepped into the room.  
“-shit doctor, I shouldn't make you laugh, you'll tear something,” John was saying.   
When he entered the room, Sherlock's gaze immediately flicked over to him; his face changing in an instant before he looked determinedly away, telling Mycroft all he needed to know. He cleared his throat, lips thinning into a grim smile that could freeze ice.   
“John, would you excuse us for a moment?”  
John looked between them, pausing for a moment to absorb the sudden coldness of the room, before rising from his chair. “Yeah, sure.” He shot Sherlock a look that was a question as he exited, and Sherlock nodded imperceptibly in reply. Mycroft's lips thinned further in amusement at their silent exchange, causing Sherlock's scowl to deepen. He appeared to be grinding his molars down, and he still wouldn't meet Mycroft's gaze. Mycroft shut the door after John, pulled the blinds violently closed, and then lowered himself into the chair John had vacated, moving it closer to the bedside so that the legs screeched briefly along the floor. Sherlock closed his eyes at the offending noise.  
“Are you lucid enough to talk sense?”  
“Fuck off, Mycroft.”  
“I'll take that as an affirmative.”   
Sherlock opened his eyes wide enough to bestow a withering look.  
“Well, I won't sink so low as to ask you to tell _me_ to my face you don't remember the shooter. We both know you could never lie to me convincingly.”  
“I'm a very good liar.”  
“To everyone else, I'm sure.”  
“Why didn't you tell me,” Sherlock bit out.  
“I did warn you, Sherlock. I said Don't get involved.”  
“Sorry, I should have read between the lines that you were indicating that John's wife was a super secret killer spy.”  
“Why are you protecting her? You can't possibly think keeping John in ignorance is going to-”  
“I am not doing anything until I am out of this damn building. Number one rule of battle, best not to go charging in when you are compromised. Wasn't it you who told me that?”  
“Interesting choice of words. Compromised. More than one meaning for that word.”  
“What the hell is that supposed to mean.”  
“You _are_ going to tell him?”  
“Well, I reckon the Christmas dinners might be a little awkward between Mary and myself if we swept this under the rug.”  
“You underestimate yourself, you're a very good actor.”  
“Not by John's standards.”  
“Well, you'd know better than I. Sherlock, I'm not here to hash out the matters of your heart, I am here to offer you my help. Just how do you see this playing out? You _have_ considered it, letting this go to protect him, but let's be reasonable, it would come out eventually, whether you intend it to or not, and then where would that leave John? Realising you and his wife had lied to him for what, five, ten, fifteen years? Then what? I have told you, the past always comes back to bite you. Sweeping things under the rug only works for so long. You must get this out in the open now.”  
Sherlock swallowed, looking uncharacteristically vulnerable. Mycroft secretly thanked the drugs for lowering his inhibitions.  
“No matter what I do, what I decide to do, John gets hurt. He deserves to be happy, but I don't know how to make that happen. I don't know how to fix this.”  
“This isn't your fault.”  
“I KNOW it's not my fault you great sack of-”  
“You are blaming yourself. You sensed something about her. Sensed something wasn't right when you first met her, yet you did nothing, you let John get in too deep. Instead of coming to me, you buried it, your emotions telling you that John still deserved happiness. Deserved her. If John was anyone else you would have never hesitated to tell him the instant you saw it, but you let this go on. Sentiment-”  
“If there wasn't a bullet hole in me I swear to god my hands would be around your-”  
“I am not here to lecture you, Sherlock-”  
“Then don't!”  
Mycroft shut his mouth, looked at Sherlock, at the wrecked expression on his face. He looked exhausted.   
“What I meant was- remember who the liar is, Sherlock. It was she who should have told him from the very beginning, but fear makes us do stupid things. You can still fix this.”  
“What would you suggest?”  
“Sugar coat it. Tell the truth, but redeem her in John's eyes. She did call the ambulance, you know. I checked.”  
“I was dead, Mycroft. Technically dead for a minute and seventeen seconds. Ambulance or no ambulance, not much good it would have done had she succeeded in killing me.”  
“But she didn't.”  
Sherlock narrowed his eyes at him, that city-levelling gaze that would have caused a lesser man to flinch. “Is that why you're here? Passing judgement on Mary?”  
“Somebody has to, Sherlock.”  
Sherlock looked away after a moment. “Fine. What if she had killed me, what would you have done? Let John continue his little fairy tale?”  
“An excellent question. If you were me, what would you have done? Mary nearly killed the one other person her husband truly cares about to keep her secret safe, to keep her family together at the expense of John's suffering. Whether that was with John's best interests at heart is a matter of perspective, but it does come off a bit...selfish, wouldn't you agree? Not to mention the whole..deceit of the past saga.”  
“I'd probably have done the same.”  
“Come again?”  
“Done everything, anything to keep what I had in regards to someone I loved and cared for.”  
“Even at John's expense?”  
“Mary already had a test run of him losing me, I'm sure they could both handle it again.”  
 _Oh, Sherlock._ Mycroft leaned back in his chair, and considered his brother. “You are being remarkably selfless. The odds of John rejecting Mary and you two resuming your little crime solving business are highly in your favour, yet you hesitate. As much as you run on about not understanding human nature, your understanding of John Watson is quite extraordinary. You have his best interests at heart.”  
“If you're giving me your blessing to do what I think is best than why are we having this conversation?”  
“Sometimes we all need a little push. And if you must know, you never were this candid when you were on cocaine. Perhaps I should hook you up more often when we discuss matters of the heart.”  
Sherlock was not amused.  
“This has nothing to do with me, this is about John. I was speaking in hypothetical. One must put oneself in another's shoes to determine motive, and pronounce the correct sentence, you know that.”  
“But it is in the end John's sentence, not Mary's, that we are discussing. You must be careful, one can betray much about one's thinking by putting yourself in another's shoes.”  
“Call it the drugs talking. It's not fair we're having this conversation when I can barely think straight.”  
“I suppose the true hypothetical is how much of a forgiving man is John Watson? There is a child's future at stake as well, we mustn't forget.”  
“I don't care about the sodding baby, Mycroft. If I screw this up, it could break him, one way or another.”  
“So glad he isn't around to overhear your compassion regarding his child. And I know you don't mean that, so lets both not mince words.”  
“...”  
“Do you think he would forgive her?”  
“What does that matter, even if they keep on pretending, their marriage is built on lies and deceit. I may not be a relationship expert, but any idiot can see the forecast for couple bliss is looking pretty dim at the moment. How long do you reckon-”  
“That is not our concern. Our concern is what we must do now, in the present. John will have to deal with the consequences in his own time, whether he decides to forgive her or not. Stop procrastinating and tell him, the sooner the better.”  
“Easier said than done, Mycroft.”  
He sniffed, leaned down and pulled a folder out of his briefcase.  
“John doesn't deserve rotting rats under the beds of those he loves.”  
“Your metaphors are getting more and more stupid.”  
Mycroft ignored him, and placed the folder on his bed. “This is Mrs Morstan's file. I suggest you utilise the free time on your hands and read it. Between you and John, no matter how this plays out, one of you should be armed with the proper knowledge. And as much as you want to protect him, remember that the more John Watson knows of the truth, the safer he will be.”  
“You know every intelligence agent, retired or otherwise in this whole damn country. You've been sitting on this information for months. Why didn't you show me this before?”  
Mycroft pursed his lips. “You didn't have a bullet hole in you before.”  
Sherlock sucked his lower lip into his mouth, a tic Mycroft read as plainly as newsprint that took him back awhile.   
“I'm going to need some things.”  
“What do you require?”  
“Give me my phone back. I need a wireless headset, a light projector, and I need you to contact a man by the name of Wiggins comma Bill,” Sherlock said as he snatched up a pen and scribbled an address, handed it to Mycroft.  
“You always did do everything with such theatrics,” he said as he took the slip of paper.  
“Wonder where I learned that from. But first I'm sleeping for ten hours, your talk has left me more exhausted than usual. Get out.”  
He stood and buttoned his suit jacket. “Rest well, brother dear. Bear in mind I remain on your side, no matter what you may think.”  
The door clicked shut, and Sherlock let out an uncharacteristic noise akin to a tiger being trapped in a frustratingly small iron cage.  
xxx

“Everything okay?”  
Sherlock opened his eyes, and looked at John's face- open, concerned, completely unaware that his life was about to be turned upside down. Again.  
 _I'm so sorry, John._  
Sherlock didn't dignify his question with an answer, but just met his eyes with his own half open ones.   
“I'm going to need twice as much morphine to numb the pain of that encounter.”  
John chuckled, then glanced down at the blank folder that Mycroft had left, still on the bed that Sherlock had forgotten about. “What's this, then?”   
Sherlock picked it up, pulled back the sheet with his other hand and stuffed it up the front of his hospital gown. “Everything that stands between the present and simpler times.”  
“Sounds important. Then again, it never was a proper conversation with your brother if he didn't leave a file marked CONFIDENTIAL on his way out of a room.”   
Sherlock's eyes were drifting, focusing on nothing in particular.  
“Sometimes I feel we are strapped in to a sickening theme park ride. I'm not sorry you got on, John, I just hope the vomit is worth the thrill.”  
“It's always worth the thrill.”  
“Sometimes I'm not so sure.”  
“Is you getting shot vomit?”  
“I wish. In any case, you're strapped in now, there's no getting off.”  
“When you start waxing confusing rhetoric, I know its time to make my exit. You should sleep.” John stood. Sherlock's eyelids drooped.   
“Things used to be so simple, John. Two men, in a flat, solving crimes. What happened to those two men? Why do things have to become complicated?”  
John turned at the door.  
“As someone once told me, real life is rarely so neat. Have a good sleep, Sherlock.”  
Then he was gone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in one stream of consciousness to try and make sense of HLV. This is what happens when you turn ranting analyses into a fic, so sorry if its shitty.


End file.
